Expectations
by Hedgewitchery
Summary: Begins just before the birth of Daine and Numair's second child. Probably completely OOC, because, no, I haven't read TC or TQ yet! Rated T for some unpleasant descriptive passages. Chapter 4 up.
1. Chapter 1

**Update A/N: **I'm updating all 4 chapters to fix some little things that have been bugging me for a while. No major rewrites or changes.

**A/N: **Before anyone asks, no, I haven't read _Trickster's Queen_ (or even _Trickster's Choice_) yet. So I have no idea what, in the "real" world of Tortall, would be going on at this point. I'm just making it up -- I hope nobody minds.

**Disclaimer: **Not mine. Tamora Pierce's. All hail.

**

* * *

1: Anger and Aftermath**

The woman crossing the university's main courtyard resembles nothing so much as a small ship running before a gale. Her progress is a little ungainly; her blue shift bellies out before her like a full sail; a small dragon and an even smaller child swirl and eddy in her wake.

The three of them are a sight to see. The woman is of middle height, but currently considerably more than middling girth; her thick brown hair, which she has tried to restrain under a headscarf, escapes in wild curls on every side. Her fair skin glows warmly from the exertion of carrying herself this far; her blue-grey eyes fairly crackle with anger. The little girl – she is perhaps two years old, certainly no more than three – is of striking appearance, with fair skin, rosy cheeks, huge blue-grey eyes, and an untamed mass of glossy black hair. She appears to have been dressed – or to have dressed herself – in considerable haste. Several times she loses a shoe and waits, standing forlornly on one foot, for the dragonet to retrieve it and help her put it back on.

The dragon's scales are glowing red, and – alone of the otherwise silent group – she gives vent to worried and indignant noises.

* * *

The odd little procession halts outside a certain university building, under a certain window on the second floor.

The woman looks up at the window. Absently, she lays a hand on her rounded belly, stroking it, and her angry expression softens for a moment. Then she frowns again. The large, delicate ears of a bat sprout from under her tangled curls. She pauses briefly, listening hard.

"Numair!" she shouts, as loudly as she can. She winces at the sound of her own voice, and instantly her ears go human again. "Numair Salmalín! I know you're there – I can hear you. Come out _this minute!"_

The little girl tugs on her mother's skirts. "Ma?" she says. "Are you sure he's up dere? _I_ can't hear anyfing."

"I'm sure," her mother replies grimly. "Did you see those big bat ears, love? Bats can hear even _very very_ tiny sounds."

Then she takes a deep breath and raises her voice again: "I'm waiting, _Master Salmalín!_"

Finally a head is thrust out of the window, followed (in the normal way) by the rest of its owner's top half. The mage, too, is a sight to behold, though for a rather different reason: his hair is unkempt, his eyes bleary, his skin tinged with grey, and dark stubble has sprouted on his face. "Magelet, must you?" he says plaintively. "I'm just in the middle of a very complicated—"

"_Numair._ Do you know what day it is?"

He frowns. "Of course I do. It's four days before Midsummer's Eve."

She throws up her hands, exasperated. "That's just what it isn't," she says. "Midsummer's Eve is _tonight_, Numair. They're laying the fires right this minute."

He is staring at her, eyes wide in dismay. "Do you mean I've been here _four days?_" he demands."Daine, why didn't you send for me, or—"

"Lindhall came by your office twice and couldn't get in. Alanna and Onua both tried to speak to you in the fire, and got no reply." She is telling the messengers off on her fingers as she speaks, her small shadow nodding along; around the courtyard, other windows are sprouting inquisitive heads, and passers-by linger just within earshot to watch the fun. "I sent two or three of your students. I sent a few pages I happened to spot around the palace. This afternoon I sent Kit, and she came back frantic when she couldn't get your door open. I'd already sent everyone I could think of, so I thought I'd better come round myself."

The significance of what she is telling him has begun to sink in now. "But, magelet," he says weakly, "Alanna said you had to stay in bed."

"I _know_ that," she replies. "Why d'you think it's taken me four days to come out here to shout at you?"

Whatever has been absorbing all his attention for the past four days has also – unsurprisingly – sapped his strength and energy. Gingerly, he lowers himself to the seat under the window so that he can lean out without risking a fall. "Stay where you are," he says. "I'll come down."

There is a pause.

"In a minute."

"You'll do no such thing," says his wife grimly. "You're done in. We'll come up."

He tries to protest, but she is already marching toward the door, daughter and dragonet on her heels. "Mithros, Mynoss and Shakith!" he mutters, running disbelieving fingers over his prickly jaw. "I've really done it this time."

* * *

Numair opens the door to admit the three of them – it is all he can do, by now, to lever himself upright and walk across the room – and takes a convenient but precarious seat atop a stack of books. With a tired smile, he holds out a hand to his daughter, who looks alarmed and darts behind her mother's skirts.

Daine opens her mouth to speak – to shout, really – but the look on his face stops her; he already knows what she is going to say, and saying it in front of their daughter will only frighten the child for no good reason. Deflated, she looks around for a seat – a safer one than his – and subsides onto a corner of his cluttered desk. Her small companions lean against her legs, clinging a little fearfully, and she strokes their heads.

"We were so scared," she says softly. "Sarra and Kitten and I. I thought you'd blown yourself up, or lost track of things and – and _used_ yourself up." Her tone sharpens a little: "Looks to me as though you nearly did, at that. You're always after me to be more careful, Numair, and look at you! Have you slept at all? Have you eaten anything?"

"I think …" he waves a large hand vaguely in the direction of a bookshelf, on the top of which rests a small stack of dirty plates.

She follows his gesture and sighs. "I see. Numair, what in the name of Shakith were you _doing_ in here?"

He tries a sheepish smile. "It's a rather complicated spell …"

But she is glaring now, arms folded, and he knows that this won't satisfy her.

"A complicated spell for who?" she demands. "Nobody I've asked knows what you've been up to, so it can't be anything Jon asked you to work on, or—" She sees his expression and stops abruptly, shaking her head. "What am I going to do with you, Numair?" she asks him. "I've asked you again and again to leave the healing to the healers. I'm going to be fine. The baby is going to be fine. You, on the other hand, look half dead. For such a clever man," she adds, "you can be awfully stupid."

She hauls herself to her feet with another sigh. "Come along," she says. "You can lean on me. Let's get you home and into bed."

He has enough strength left to object to this, at least. "Out of the question," he says firmly. "Alanna told you not even to lift Sarra. You _certainly _mustn't try to lift _me_. And, magelet, with respect, I don't think either of us can walk all the way home at the moment."

She laughs – the sound a welcome relief that goes some way toward easing the knot of misery in his belly. "You _are_ a silly man," she says. "Of course we can't walk. Cloud and Spots are coming to take us home. I called them as soon as I saw what you'd been doing to yourself. All we need do is get ourselves down the stairs."

She turns to the dragonet, whose glistening hide has subsided to a more contented golden hue. "Kit, would you mind neatening him up a bit? People will think I don't take proper care of him …"

The dragon makes a sound that says, more clearly than words, _You are a very bad man and don't deserve it_; then another that, in an eyeblink, cleans and unwrinkles the mage's clothes, tidies his hair and whisks away the incipient beard. He thanks her gravely.

Then he turns to his wife, who is eyeing him critically. He levers himself upright, with considerable difficulty, and makes his feet take one step, then two, until he is close enough to touch her. Little Sarra, evidently deciding he really is her Da after all, transfers herself darking-like from her mother's leg to his, and he reaches down to ruffle her hair. Then, gingerly – because he is _very _tired, and she is still angry with him – he puts his arms around his wife.

"My sweet magelet," he whispers into her hair, "what would I do without you?"

Daine sniffs at him derisively, but, to his immense relief, she returns his embrace. Perhaps not quite so enthusiastically as usual. "I think we all know the answer to _that_," she says.

Then she raises her head, suddenly alert. "We'd best get a move on," she says. "Cloud and Spots are downstairs, waiting."

* * *

They have both been scolded thoroughly and sent to bed, their daughter borne off "to be looked after by more sensible people." Both exhausted, they drift at the edge of sleep.

"I wasn't trying to be a healer, you know," he remarks.

"What?" she has sufficiently forgiven him to cuddle against his chest, and hears his comment only as a vague baritone rumble under her ear. She raises her head to look at him.

"It was a protection spell to—"

"Mouse manure." She is frowning at him again. "What protection spell would take four days and practically kill you? I've watched you ward a whole army camp, remember? What was it really?"

"It really was a protection spell," he retorts, nettled. "At least … part of it was a protection spell."

She waits, one eyebrow raised. He can resist that look, they both know, only for so long.

"A foretelling," he finally mumbles – face turned away so that he doesn't have to meet her accusing eyes. "I just wanted to see – to make sure—"

A stifled sound makes him turn back to her, alarmed. To his astonishment, she is laughing, a muffling hand over her mouth.

"And what – what did you see?" she asks. It is an effort to get the words out.

He scowls and folds his arms across his chest. "Nothing. You interrupted me at a very delicate stage in the working, and—"

"A delicate stage, yes," she interrupts. "The stage _just before_ you got to the end of your Gift and started in on your life force, which I'm sure you'd have drained as well, since you clearly haven't the sense the Gods gave an apple tree. Honestly, Numair, do you have _any idea_ how idiotic—"

But she stops there because, in the split-second before he turns away again, she has seen his dark eyes fill with tears. This is almost more shocking than anything else: he hates to cry, and she can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times, in all their long acquaintance, that she has seen him do so. Disarmed, she reaches up to turn his face back to hers.

"It's going to be all right, love," she says, holding his gaze. "Nothing terrible is going to happen. My parents will be here tomorrow, and the baby will be here very soon, I think, and I promise you, both of us will be fine."

He holds her tight, fighting to master the sobs that well up in his chest. "I had a dream," he whispers, finally. "A nightmare. It frightened me – it was so real, so vivid, like those dreams we had in the Divine Realms …"

"I remember," she says. "You woke us all in the night, shouting, and when Sarra and I woke up again the next morning, you'd gone. You didn't even leave a note," she adds accusingly.

"I'm sorry, sweet. I meant to be back by suppertime. But I had to know, I couldn't bear not knowing whether it was true, or waiting around for it to happen …"

"For what to happen?" she asks him, gently.

He chokes down another sob. "I dreamed – I dreamed that you died – and the baby. That Alanna and Baird couldn't save you. It was – there was so much blood, so much pain … I heard you screaming – I made them let me in, and – and I saw you, lying there, and the baby – a beautiful little boy, but dead, stillborn … and your parents came, and Sarra, and I had to tell them … Magelet, I wanted to die too. I'm not strong enough to go on without you, but the thought of leaving Sarra …"

"Numair." Her voice whispering his name like a soothing caress. "Love, not every dream is a sending from the Gods."

"I know that." Voice muffled against her shoulder.

"I have horrible dreams, too, love. It's one of the symptoms of pregnancy." She kisses his cheek tenderly. "Before Sarra was born, I used to dream every night about dropping her on her head or leaving her on the floor of the stables and watching her be trampled. They're only dreams, Numair. Trust me. I'd never leave you and Sarra alone."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Much of the more technical detail in this chapter and the next is based on my own experience and that of one of my close friends. In case anyone's wondering if stuff like this really happens, yes, it does.

**BaBaKaNuSh-13 – **thank you so much! You made my day :). Daine and Numair are the only characters of someone else's that I feel like I can write semi-well – I'm not sure why – and I was actually really nervous about that interaction. So I'm glad it turned out to be believable.

**music nerd **– nope, I haven't. I've had them on order from the library for ages, but no joy as yet. I have, however, read the beginning excerpt from TC that's posted on TP's web site, and have gathered, ahem, certain things about the books elsewhere.

**Drop Your Oboe **– (love your pen name, by the way!) Don't worry!

**Disclaimer: **In case the last chapter didn't disclaim sufficiently, I don't own any of these characters, Tamora Pierce does.

**

* * *

2: Labour of Love**

"Grandma! Grandda!" Little Sarralyn's gleeful shrieks are as music to the ears of her grandparents, who (confined as they are to the Divine Realms except for brief visits during the great holidays) see far less of her than they would like. Daine can never work out how her mother does it – why little Sarra, usually so shy with strangers and even with well-known acquaintances when she hasn't seen them for weeks, is invariably so eager to greet Sarra (the elder) and Weiryn when they arrive for one of their infrequent visits. But so it is, and at the moment she is very grateful for the fact. It pains her to leave her daughter long in the royal nursery, but to give her the necessary attention while following Alanna's latest orders – to lift nothing heavier than a fork or spoon, and to stay abed or lying on a sofa at all times except when using the privy, on pain of dire personal retribution – is impossible.

"Sarralyn! Sweetling, look how you've grown!" Daine's Ma, the Green Lady, is no one's idea of a grandmother, perpetually a radiant, honey-blonde woman of thirty. She embraces her namesake with a grandmother's love, however, and a grandmother's teary eyes. "And _such_ a little beauty."

"Hmmph. Takes after her da a wee bit too much, if you ask me," grumbles her consort, Weiryn, god of the hunt.

"Da!" his daughter protests, from her position on one of the sitting-room couches. "You say that as though it were something terrible. And I notice you don't say it in front of him," she adds, with a wicked grin.

"What was that, Magelet?" Out of bed already, the subject of her remarks looms in the doorway, topping his father-in-law – antlers excluded – by several inches. He looks tired and rather pale, but otherwise better recovered than one might expect from his recent forays into ill-advised magical experiments.

"Nothing, love," Daine replies. "My da was just saying how much Sarralyn looks like you."

"Nonsense," says Numair. "My Sarralyn is a child of surpassing gorgeousness, and it follows, therefore, that she must take after her ma." As he says this he scoops his daughter up in his arms and tickles her, reducing her to helpless giggles.

Daine and her mother laugh, and even Weiryn looks somewhat mollified.

* * *

"_Now?_" Alanna exclaims.

"Well, yes," says Sarra Beneksri. "You didn't think I'd let my second grandchild be born without me, did you?"

"You did say the baby was due at Midsummer, Alanna," Daine adds. "It's your own fault if he took you at your word."

"'He,' is it?" says Alanna, with a sharp look at her friend. _This is new_. "Well, that's that, then, I suppose. I defer to you, Lady," she says to Sarra, with a little bow; "your experience is much more extensive than mine, I've no doubt."

There is more in this vein, but Daine doesn't hear it. "Ma, Alanna," she says finally, her voice tight, "please don't make me stay in this bed. I need to walk, or – or something. My back …" Her face contorts; she struggles visibly to relax and takes slow, deep breaths.

They turn as one woman to look at her, and then, with worried faces, at each other. She is labouring harder than either had expected, so early in the proceedings – but, so far, with very little result.

"It could be—" Sarra begins, as Alanna is moving to lay her hands on Daine's belly. Purple fire gathers around her fingers, and she nods briefly. "Still face up," she says. "No wonder."

"Stop – talking about me – as if I'm – not here," Daine gasps. "I don't like it."

She has a sudden, horrible vision of the scene from Numair's dream, and shudders. "If something's wrong – just tell me what it is. And – _let me up. _Don't make me beg."

"All right," says Alanna, rather surprisingly.

* * *

"It isn't stopping," Daine moans. She is on her feet, leaning wearily forward with her arms braced against the windowsill. "Why isn't it stopping?"

The sun is high overhead; small birds line the tree-branches under the window and perch anxiously on the sill.

"What isn't stopping, love?" her mother asks, wiping Daine's damp forehead and smoothing her hair.

"The pains. They're supposed to come and go, remember?" she is almost too exhausted for annoyance – but not quite. "Not go on and on for half an hour. But at least—" she tries for a smile, and produces a ghastly parody – "at least I've had lots of time to get used to it."

Nobody answers her, which is infuriating. "Ma! Alanna! I know something's wrong. Just tell me." Her voice breaks; she becomes aware of tears on her cheeks, but can't be sure whether physical or mental agony is responsible. "If the baby – or if I'm going to die – tell me soon – I want to say goodbye to—"

"Bright Goddess, Daine, you're not going to die!" Alanna has grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her upright to glare at her with those odd violet eyes.

Two-leggers, sounds a voice in Daine's mind. You all think you're going to die when you're foaling. It's enough to send a Person mad.

"Go away, Cloud." She is so confused and exhausted that she says it aloud. "I've done this before, remember? This is worse."

"The baby's facing the wrong way, Daine," Alanna says, more gently this time. "I did tell you that, remember? Her head is pressing up against your spine, and that's what makes the pain so steady."

"His," Daine insists. "_His_ head. No, you didn't tell me."

Even more surprisingly, Alanna doesn't argue. "I'm telling you now."

* * *

Numair has handed his daughter over to Eleni Cooper, summoned by Alanna hours ago, the better to fret and pace in solitude. He does not like the sounds he hears; but he has been told very firmly by his mother-in-law that he will be called if he is wanted and is not to step over the threshold otherwise. Even Numair Salmalín does not lightly disobey the orders of a goddess.

He is uneasy, and growing more so with every hour that passes. Try as he may, he cannot believe Daine's reassurances. Their daughter's birth was swift and uneventful, despite the oddities of the pregnancy that preceded it; no frightening dreams plagued him then, and he cannot dismiss the importance of his current recurring nightmare.

"How goes it?" The voice at his shoulder startles him so that he jumps and cracks his head against a sconce.

"Steady on, lad," says George Cooper, taking the mage's arm and helping him to a convenient chair. "I've brought ye a bite to eat."

Numair looks blankly from his friend to the cloth-wrapped offering of bread and cheese George has put in his hands. George sighs and shakes his head. "I can see I ought to've come by earlier," he says. "Ye're in a bad way. Come along, now, have a bite. It'll do ye good."

"I don't know if I can," Numair says. "I'll only throw it up again, I think. Perhaps – some water?"

"Right y'are." George produces a canteen, which Numair holds to his lips with shaking fingers. George's hands steady his own. _She did this for me, in our first battle together_, he remembers, drinking gratefully. _Daine, my magelet, what I wouldn't give to be able to help you now!_

* * *

It is after sunset on Midsummer's Day. The Royal Palace is quiet; many of its denizens are still sleeping off the revelry of the night before, or are going about their business silently, with aching heads, vowing (untruthfully) never to repeat it.

In the palace nursery, a little girl with blue-grey eyes and glossy black hair is plied with toys and marvellous tales to distract her from the long absence of her parents.

In another wing, in an otherwise deserted corridor, a tall mage paces back and forth before a solid oaken door that bears two brass nameplates: _Numair Salmalín _and _Veralidaine Sarrasri Salmalín._ He is exhausted; he appears to remain upright and in motion entirely through an act of will. From time to time he pauses to look longingly at the door.

Just as the first stars appear in the sky, a woman screams.

* * *

Numair wrenches the door open – which takes some time, as Alanna has spelled it against precisely this sort of effort – and crosses the sitting-room in two long strides. The door to the bedchamber is open, and another step would take him through it.

Instead he stops on the threshold, frozen in horror.

It is the scene from his nightmare made vividly, horribly real. There is Daine, lying pale and still amid bedsheets splashed with blood. There is Alanna, arms red to the elbows, turning to him a face whose expression he cannot read. Daine's mother is there, which is not quite right; but the babe in her arms is as still and silent as his father dreamed him.

Numair's ears fill with a strange sound – a rushing, thudding, buzzing sound – so loud and insistent that he fails to hear the ordinary, unalarmed sounds of the birds outside the window. As the darkness rushes up to meet him, some small part of him wonders, _Is this how it feels to die?_


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **OK, so I'm actually a little hurt at all these insinuations that I might actually kill off Daine. I'm not a bad person:D I'm not going to kill off Daine. It's just Numair being melodramatic. If you read the last paragraph of chapter 2 carefully, you will notice a clue to that effect. I am, however, very flattered and touched that people are liking this story and following it with such devotion. So, thank you all:)

**Disclaimer: **Still not mine, still Tamora Pierce's.

**

* * *

3: Truth and Reconciliation **

The women hear the outer door crash open and heavy steps without; they turn from their tasks to see Numair in the doorway, dark eyes opened wide in shock. His already pale face goes the colour of a tallow-candle; his hands clutch at the doorframe. His lips form a strangled, soundless "No!"

Alanna, too drained and tired for diplomacy, shouts at him: "Out, Numair! Out, _now_!" But it is only too clear that he is beyond hearing her. "Gods damn it, Numair …"

She sees his eyes roll ceilingward. A net of purple fire catches him as he falls and eases him gently to the floor. Then, with a sigh, Alanna returns to her patient. The worst of the tears she has already healed, but not before more blood was lost than Daine can easily spare.

"How is he?" she asks Sarra, who is now cooing at the baby, confident that her daughter is in safe hands.

Sarra brings him closer to the bed, and they regard him fondly. His eyes are tightly shut, his small pink mouth working.

"We should wake her; they'll both be better off once he's nursed a little," Sarra says.

"Of course. But I don't want her waking to see _that._" Alanna jerks her coppery head at the recumbent mage. "Let me just—"

Wiping her red-streaked arms on a towel, she steps over Numair, trots across the sitting-room, and leans out into the corridor. "Steward!" she bellows. No steward is forthcoming, but there is one of the younger pages, a lad of no more than eleven or twelve, padding down the corridor twenty feet away. "You, the page!" Alanna calls.

When he stops and turns to bow to her – awe and not a little fear in his expression for the famed Lioness – she addresses him impatiently: "No need to bother with all that, youngster. What I do need is that you carry a message to Duke Baird in the Healers' Wing. Can you do that?"

The boy nods vigorously.

"Say that he's needed here, with one or two strong men, as soon as he can possibly manage. It's a matter of urgency – I wouldn't summon him at this hour else."

"Yes, sir – ma'am," says the page. "I understand." And, bursting to have his errand over and relate it to his friends, he takes off running.

* * *

Alanna hauls Numair bodily out of the bedchamber, and closes the door, signalling to Sarra to wake Daine out of her witched sleep. She is more worried about her tall friend, now, than about his wife: _He should have come to by now. But with luck he's just sleeping off whatever Gods-curst foolery he was up to yesterday …_

Reclosing the door behind her, she steps back into the bedchamber, smiling to see Daine – though still pale and sleepy-looking – sitting up in bed, entranced with the babe at her breast. "You see, Alanna?" she says softly, raising shining eyes to her friend. "A boy, just like I said. Isn't he just the most beautiful little man you've ever seen? And so quiet … remember how Sarra howled when she was born?"

Alanna smiles at her; then she looks around the room, puzzled. "Where did she go?" she asks. "Your ma? She was with you when I—"

"They had to go back," Daine explains. "They ought to've gone when the sun set, but Ma wanted to see us safe before she left. But you know how it is …"

"I'm glad she was able to stay so long," says Alanna truthfully. "It was touchy for a time there, youngling. Your fine boy, there, gave us a scare."

"What happened?" Daine looks up sharply. "I remember bearing down – but – "

"He'd got the cord tied in an overhand knot, somehow," her friend tells her, "and put his little foot through the knot. We had to – to pull him out. Your ma made you sleep. I don't like to spell a labouring woman asleep – it's not healthy for mother or babe – but we thought it best this time. I feared you'd faint, when we weren't expecting it. Then I let you sleep while I healed the worst of the tearing."

There are sounds on the other side of the bedchamber door now: heavy footsteps, whispered orders, a thud, a muffled curse. Daine seems not to hear any of it, for which Alanna is duly grateful.

"Lucky for me you weren't off adventuring!" Daine smiles. "Is it because Ma spelled me that I feel so – so dizzy and tired?"

"You laboured nearly all day, Daine. And you lost more blood than you ought, and needed a lot of healing. But a few more days' rest and good food will set you right."

Daine groans at the thought of _a few more days_ confined to bed and sofa. But all is well – she has her little one safe and sound – and, when all's said and done, there's little enough to complain of. Except …

"Wherever has Numair got to?" she asks, frowning. "He hasn't fallen asleep on the floor out there, or something, has he?"

"Well, in a manner of speaking …" Alanna tries to dissemble – _Why upset her now?_ – but Daine's frown deepens and she gives in. "He came in here, earlier," she says at last. "There was quite a lot of blood, and you were out cold …"

"Alanna." Daine's voice is urgent. "Alanna, _what did he see?_"

"What did he see?" Puzzled. "Just us – your ma and me. She was holding the baby. And you, sleeping. He – you'll laugh when I tell you, a great brave war-mage, fainting at the sight of a little—"

But there is no time to finish her sentence, because Daine, white-lipped with panic, babe in her arms, is struggling to get out of bed.

"Oh, no, you don't, young lady!" It is not easy to disobey a firm order from the Lioness, especially when one is exhausted and weak from loss of blood; but Daine is furiously determined. In the end Alanna has to hold her down.

"You don't understand, Alanna!" She gives up the struggle and folds in on herself, tenderly cradling her now-sleeping son. Her eyes are huge in her pale, pale face. "Where is he? Is he out there? You have to tell him—"

"Duke Baird and his people came and took him to the Healers' Wing," Alanna interrupts. "He'll be fine there, he—"

"No," says Daine with deadly firmness. "He won't. You must find him, Alanna, and tell him I'm – _we're_ – all right."

"Someone will tell him, Daine. I'd rather not leave you alone."

"He won't believe them. It has to be you – you were _here_. _Please_, Alanna."

"Daine." Alanna takes her by the elbows. "What is this about?"

"He had a dream. What he saw, when he came in here – Alanna, he thinks we're dead. If you don't go to him and tell him we're not, I'm afraid he'll – he'll—" She can't bring herself to say the words, but there can be no mistaking her meaning. "Send me a trainee healer if you want to, but just please _go!_"

And, silently cursing mages who won't do as they're told, Alanna goes.

* * *

Numair wakes in a strange, narrow bed in an unfamiliar room – a bright, tidy chamber flooded with morning sunlight. His first, comforting thought is that it was all another nightmare, dreamed after falling asleep in the corridor. But George would not have been in his dreams, would he? No – it must really have happened.

_Daine._

A hot hammer-blow of grief.

_Sarra._

The clutch of panic round his throat.

_I'm not dead, then. More's the pity._

He does not weep – his despair is too profound for tears – but sits perfectly still, long arms round his knees, staring blindly at the sunlit wall.

He does not hear the sparrows twittering happily on the windowsill or see the stocky figure, arms crossed and legs outthrust, asleep in a chair in the corner.

* * *

He is still sitting thus, deaf and blind to the world around him, when a cheerful Duke Baird strides into the room and greets him with a hearty clap on the shoulder.

"So you're up, are you? This one will go in the record-books, I think, old friend."

But there is no reply, only a shrinking away of the clapped shoulder, and Baird perches on the bed to look his patient in the eyes.

Whatever he expected to see there, it was not this blank, fathomless despair.

Rising, he approaches the sleeper in the corner and touches her shoulder cautiously, whispering her name. "Alanna. Wake up, Alanna. You're needed, my dear."

The Lioness wakes abruptly and springs to her feet, then – finding herself too stiff and cramped to stay there – subsides back into her seat. "What is it?" she asks Baird. "Has he woken yet? How long has it been?"

The chief healer answers her last question first: "It's been four days, all told. He isn't sleeping, but …" A gesture at the hunched figure on the bed. "He ought to be more or less recovered by now, whatever he did to himself. His Gift seems fully restored, for the matter of that. But something's badly amiss with him. I don't think he even recognized me when I spoke to him."

Alanna gets to her feet again, slowly. "Numair?" she says, crossing the small room to perch next to him on the bed. "Numair, it's Alanna. Are you all right? Are you even _there_?"

He turns to her, the movement slow and halting. "Alanna."

"Good – you still know me, at any rate." This seems like progress of a sort. She glances at Baird, now occupying her chair in the corner, and nods briefly. The healer rises and slips out the door.

"How long – how long have I—"

"Four days, give or take," she answers.

"And you've been here? You're – a good friend, Alanna."

"Bosh. It's nothing to do with you – I promised Daine I'd stay with you till you woke up."

"Daine." His voice is a whisper, rough with painful longing. "Tell me – tell me what happened."

Alanna sighs. "She warned me you'd be like this," she says. "She's fretting herself sick over you, Numair. Sarralyn, too. Pull yourself together, can't you?"

And still he stares; but a something has kindled in the depths of his eyes that was not there before. "But I saw …" he whispers. "So white, so still … there was so much blood …"

"Men!" The Lioness is tired and hungry, and her bones ache. She loves this man as a brother; she understands that he has had a shock; but she is at the end of her patience. "Were you or were you not, Numair Salmalín, told _very specifically_ to stay outside?"

"But I heard her scream."

"And rushed in like a tilt-silly squire, and distracted me from a difficult and complicated healing by fainting dead away. There's a very good reason—"

"And you're telling me she's alive? My Daine is alive?"

_What a difference the truth can make._

"Alive, whole, and the mother of a fine, healthy son," says Alanna, with some impatience. "Who's four days old, now, and yet to see his blasted fool of a father."

"Where – can I see her? See them?" Renewed, pulled back from the brink of an unspeakable horror, he can hardly keep still.

In spite of herself, Alanna smiles. "By now they'll be waiting outside," she tells him. "I'll fetch them."

* * *

She is alive – they're both alive – Alanna has said so. Still it is a wondrous shock to see her so, rosy-cheeked and upright, stepping through the doorway, speaking his name.

For all that her tone of voice makes it clear she isn't best pleased with him.

Sarra, at least, is delighted to see him this time; she runs to him and hurls herself into his outspread arms. "Da! Where were you?" she demands. "We _missed_ you. Look! Mama got us a new baby brudder!"

"Da missed you, too, sweetling," Numair murmurs, holding his daughter tight. "Have you come to show me your new brother?"

The little girl nods importantly. "Ma bringed him wif us. But—" she drops her voice to a loud whisper—"We have to be _very very_ _quiet_, 'cos he's _sleeping._"

"It's all right, Sarra," Daine says, smiling at her daughter. "Your brother sleeps as soundly as his da. I don't think he'll wake up."

It is one thing to talk to Sarra, who is small and uncomplicated and infinitely forgiving; it is quite another to know how to begin with Daine, now that he has done two unforgivably stupid and probably dangerous things in one week.

He recognizes the cloth sling she wears, over one shoulder, supporting its precious burden along her other arm: it is the same one in which Sarralyn spent most of her infancy, riding along with her mother everywhere Daine went, from the stables to the royal council chamber, even to weddings and one or two state banquets; only true danger, in those days, could persuade Daine to leave her baby at home. She has already gone back to shirt and breeches, he notices – she is plumper than usual, still, but is visibly resuming her normal shape. He smiles shyly at her, hoping for forgiveness, for – for what, he hardly knows.

"Come and see your son," she says.

He swings his long legs over the side of the cot, Sarra still in his arms, and totters to his feet. They approach each other cautiously. Silent, awed, he pulls aside the soft fabric with a gentle finger.

"Well, half of him," Daine amends. Her tone has changed utterly – loving, fond, vastly amused. "I'm sure he'll let you see his _whole_ face once he's finished his lunch."

"He's beautiful," breathes Numair. "Perfect. And so are you, my magelet." Carefully he opens the circle of his arms to embrace daughter, wife and son. "All of this is perfect."

She rests against him for a long moment, both of them content. Then she raises her head and looks at him with great solemnity. "Next time, remember," she says softly, "I keep my promises."


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N & Disclaimer: **Well, here it is! The story was finished, really, but this epilogue made me write it …

The personalities and interactions of the children in this chapter are loosely based on those of my younger brother and me. Except, of course, we can't do magic. The characters' names, and Numair, belong to Tamora Pierce.

**

* * *

4: Epilogue **

In an otherwise deserted palace courtyard, in late summer, two children are playing.

The elder, a tall, slim girl with a strong nose and long braids of glossy black hair, is darting about the courtyard, perhaps looking for a way out or for a place to hide. The younger, his eyes shut tight and his curly golden-brown head bent against a wall, is counting loudly.

"Eighteen … nineteen …"

The girl halts in the middle of the courtyard and looks around frantically. Her gaze alights on a small flock of sparrows gossiping on a windowsill. Then she darts behind a low wall nearby.

"Twenty-eight … twenty-nine … thirty!" the boy shouts. "Ready'r not, here I come!"

He turns round quickly, hoping to catch his sister in the act of concealing herself. She is nowhere to be seen. Slowly, patiently, he scans the courtyard. Then he sets out to explore it.

She is not behind any of the trees this time, nor does she appear to have climbed any of them. This is no surprise, really; they have been playing for hours, and he knows very well that she doesn't like to use the same hiding-place twice. He checks around corners, behind hitching-rails, under shrubberies, even, finally, in the rain-barrel.

The little boy is worried now. Has she grown bored with him and gone off to play with someone older and more interesting? He doesn't _think_ she would do this without telling him, but he can't be sure. Similar things have happened before. He's only seven, after all, and she is already ten; she reminds him fairly often that she has more important, more _grown-up_ things to do than play with him all day.

He stands in the centre of the courtyard, head tilted back, hands clasped behind his back, and thinks hard. His dark eyes are serious. He lowers his gaze and, very slowly, turns all the way around, studying every object carefully.

_There._ There is a low wall behind which he has not thought to look. He approaches it quickly but silently, grinning in triumph.

He heaves himself up so that his head is over the top of the wall, and his grin fades: there is no one there. But there is – almost, but not quite, concealed in a dark corner – a pile of discarded clothing: his sister's boots, breeches and shirt.

"Sarra!" he bellows, outraged. "No fair! That's _cheating_!"

The sparrows sunning themselves on the windowsill, startled by the noise, twitter at him angrily. (Most small birds would simply take flight in fear; but these are denizens of the Royal Palace in Corus, and generations of proximity to the kingdom's far-famed Wildmage have changed them in many ways.) He frowns and regards them suspiciously.

His dark eyes gleam.

Then, with no other warning, he lifts his hands; a gossamer-fine net of sparkling black fire encircles the birds. They cheep frantically, their voices blurring into a single ripple of sound.

"I'll let them all go when you tell me which one is you," he says.

One of the sparrows, managing somehow to look insulted, hops toward him and glares. Instantly he releases the net around the rest, but he keeps his sister prisoner.

She cheeps at him, her outrage as great as his. "Well, if you get to cheat," he says calmly, "then I get to cheat, too."

But, with a shimmer and a flurry of wings, she goes human again, and – though he tries valiantly – his spell is not strong enough to hold such a large being. "Ha!" she says, sticking out her tongue at him.

Then she shapes herself into a cat and leaps back over the wall.

"I'm _telling_," says her brother venomously. He looks pale and a little shaky.

"Fine." She is climbing out now, tucking shirt into breeches, boots in hand. "But I'm telling, too."

* * *

"Both of you are in _very serious trouble_," says Numair, glowering at his children from his full six-foot, five-inch height. "Do you see all these grey hairs? How many times have your mother and I told you that magic is not a toy to be played with? It can be _dangerous. _You, Sarra," shifting the glare to her (she squirms uncomfortably; she has, in fact, been told this more times than she can count), "are responsible for your brother when we aren't with you, and you know very well that tempting him to using such a powerful spell is a very poor way to exercise that responsibility. Besides which, I'm appalled that you would consider it appropriate to use magic to cheat against someone nearly three years younger than yourself."

Just as said brother is beginning to look smug, the icy black gaze turns on him. "You, Rikash, ought to know better than to attempt such a spell unsupervised – _even if_," he continues, holding up a large hand to still his son's protests, "your sister is cheating. You could just as easily have left her there and come home, could you not?"

"Well, I _guess_ so," Rikash mutters. "But …"

"But?" Numair raises an interrogative eyebrow. _This should be interesting._

His son scuffs a boot toe against the carpet. "But then I wouldn't have won the game," he says in a small voice, gaze fixed on the floor.

There is a brief, pregnant silence.

"Out! Both of you!" Numair roars. "Before you send me into an early grave!"

They scurry away, exchanging fearful glances; he has the look of someone barely maintaining control.

As soon as the heavy oaken door has shut behind them, he collapses on the sofa, howling with laughter.

* * *

"This is all your fault, Sarra!"

"Is not! You told on me first!"

"You cheated first! You didn't have to cheat. That makes it _your fault!_"

"Well, you didn't have to cheat back. You could've let me win for once."

They are silent for a moment, glaring. Then, "Sarra?"

"What?"

"What d'you think he'll do?" Rikash sounds worried now, his bravado vanished. He has been picking wildflowers for his mother by way of apology – he is given to such gestures – but the drooping bundle looks, he now thinks, rather inadequate.

"He won't do anything," Sarra reassures him. "He won't be mad anymore by suppertime, you'll see."

"How do you know?" Suspicious.

"I listened with bat ears," she explains, "after he sent us out. A little trick I learned from Ma – don't tell. And he was _laughing_."

"But he said we were giving him grey hairs!" her brother protests.

"That's nothing," says Sarra loftily. "Hasn't anyone ever told you what he did when you were born?"


End file.
